The porting exercise is a proof of concept at this phase. Just as the Ubuntu, Sailfish and Firefox ports are. If there is success with OWOS, carriers and/or OEMs will take notice because everybody knows, as you acknowledged, that webOS was indeed awesome. Ubuntu and the others don't have the prior user experience to go toe-to-toe with OWOS. If OpenMobile ever fulfills their mission of running Android within webOS, you could see a native dual-boot device in the near future. Windows Phone is such a different user experience that it would probably benefit from such an arrangement because the sales scavenging would come at Android's expense. My opinion anyway.

Openmobile sells snake oil as for webOS coming back - there are two hopes for that Bob Hope and No Hope. Even if 20% of people who used webOS came back you are still talking about a tiny ground. You will also never see a native dual boot because of because of what happens behind the scenes with marketing dollars and subs.

Openmobile sells snake oil as for webOS coming back - there are two hopes for that Bob Hope and No Hope. Even if 20% of people who used webOS came back you are still talking about a tiny ground. You will also never see a native dual boot because of because of what happens behind the scenes with marketing dollars and subs.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

Are you always this sunny and optimistic or did someone **** in your Cheerios?

I care nothing about core count. I care only about the user experience (measurements, not conjecture) and price.

In regard to being savvy ... No. Samsung isn't more savvy than anyone else. Their advantage over other Android OEM's stems from the following:
better economic scaling due to higher volume (leads to higher margins or lower prices).
much larger software budget that they invest into better hardware/software integration and QA (reliability and performance).
comparatively huge marketing investments (public image).

Freestaterocker is absolutely correct about the point I'm trying to get across. It's all about the software.

Hardware engineering isn't an area in which Samsung's mobile division outshines everyone else (build quality is debatable, but I'm talking only about their devices core hardware)

Although Samsung does well in the software/hardware integration department, what they can achieve with Android is child's play compared to what Apple and Microsoft have done. No amount of savvyness can compensate for the advantages offered by standardized hardware. What can compensate for Android's disadvantage is more powerful hardware, but that isn't available at the low end.

Apple appears unwilling to compete at the low end, which leaves a hole for WP to exploit. That has been my point all along.

While true, I really don't care. My interest is only with the smartphone market and it's developments. I'm not in the business of routing for any particular OEM.

Samsung isn't savvy? Ok.... The largest phone maker isn't savvy.

User experience is purely opinionated. Some prefer this while others prefer that, you know.

Savvy doesn't mean much in that context (shrewed? informed?). Based on previous posts I must assume you mean to say Samsung's core hardware (SoC etc) is technically superior to everyone else's, which explains part of their success. That is BS, but possibly I'm just misunderstanding you.

Of course Samsung isn't worse in the core hardware department either, but that area is not the foundation of their success.

Originally Posted by FinancialP

User experience is purely opinionated. Some prefer this while others prefer that, you know.

Obviously, but you're just failing to understand. This was about profiling OS' native UI stacks (time from API call or touch input to updates hitting the frame buffers) and determining how this varied accross various hardware configurations. Again: WP proved much more efficient than Jellybean on comparable low end hardware. Same results on high end hardware, but the difference isn't noticable to humans.

No. I had 6 horrible months with Lumia 800 what a disappointment. Switched to Motorola RAZR Maxx, it's night and day, what a joy to use and I get at least 40 hours from one charge compared to Lumia's 20. And that's not a fair comparison as Lumia had battery saver on permanently, no automatic updating of email or anything else whereas the RAZR has no such restrictions on it.

Savvy doesn't mean much in that context (shrewed? informed?). Based on previous posts I must assume you mean to say Samsung's core hardware (SoC etc) is technically superior to everyone else's, which explains part of their success. That is BS, but possibly I'm just misunderstanding you.

Of course Samsung isn't worse in the core hardware department either, but that area is not the foundation of their success.

Obviously, but you're just failing to understand. This was about profiling OS' native UI stacks (time from API call or touch input to updates hitting the frame buffers) and determining how this varied accross various hardware configurations. Again: WP proved much more efficient than Jellybean on comparable low end hardware. Same results on high end hardware, but the difference isn't noticable to humans.

I'm referring to Samsung's entire mobile division when I say Samsung is savvy. I'm referring to the pricing and availability of their phones. I'm not only talking about chips.

Samsung has proven if it wants a market, they will aggressively go for it. Low cost and high cost.

Windows phone is more efficient at touch based objects? Sure I give you that.

Samsung is so savvy that they have dual cores matching the competitors low end devices.

Originally Posted by FinancialP

I'm referring to Samsung's entire mobile division when I say Samsung is savvy. I'm referring to the pricing and availability of their phones. I'm not only talking about chips.

Well okay. I'll give you that Samsung has the power to strong arm U.S. carriers into submission. However, as soon as they can't tie deals to their Galaxy S3 devices, all that "savvyness" geos out the window. The difficulties Samsung had with the Ativ S are proof enough of that. Anyway, I think your original point was that Samsung is better able to compete at the low-end due to that "savvyness" (of the entire mobile division). They certainly are doing very well, but not to the degree that they can offer significantly more hardware performance per dollar compared to the competition.

Originally Posted by FinancialP

Windows phone is more efficient at touch based objects? Sure I give you that.

Well, that statement is somewhat too restrictive. Profiling points were much broader, including the OS's compositing engine and UI frameworks, the UI rendering engine, resolution scaling in games, GPU contention, etc, etc, etc. Anyway, I take it we have come to an agreement then. As originally stated, WP enjoys an advantage when it comes to software efficiency, at least in those areas that have an influence on the user experience in terms of UI performance.

My blame lies with Portico. Pre portico my battery life was pretty decent, now its just horrid.

Mine shipped with portico already installed, and my battery's been amazing since day 1. I used it for that whole first day, from when I bought it at 11am until I went to bed at midnight on the 61% charge it shipped with and still had juice left when I plugged it in that night.

No. I had 6 horrible months with Lumia 800 what a disappointment. Switched to Motorola RAZR Maxx, it's night and day, what a joy to use and I get at least 40 hours from one charge compared to Lumia's 20. And that's not a fair comparison as Lumia had battery saver on permanently, no automatic updating of email or anything else whereas the RAZR has no such restrictions on it.

correct but not against a Jelly Bean designed device. Nevertheless you are 100% correct about the battery life.

I would disagree. I run jelly bean on a Motorola Xoom and its disgusting how slow the tablet got after installing jelly bean. It ran better on ICS. As was the same experience with my HTC One X. Android adds certain functions to help the phone run smoother, but what type of phones does this really apply to? The high end phones. Wheras the low will still preform low.

In all actuality I believe the new Ubuntu Mobile OS has the ability to kill android since its apps can basically run through a web browser using HTML5 and having a almost pure Linux experience.
Sent from my Nokia Lumia 920 using Board Express

Interesting topic here considering I'm an Android fanboy at heart. I agree with what many have commented on here scanning thru the pages. Android is moving at an alarming rate, you buy a device today and tomorrow it feels outdated due to the constant releasing of new devices. I will admit that Android is finally getting into more of its own and addressing many issues now since moving into Android v.4.x.x (Ice Cream Sandwich & Jelly Bean).

I do fear that from the OEM's standpoint they are only worried about bigger & faster processors and the whole thought process of battery life/management and overall construction of the device is being left behind is many regards. I would like to see better battery times become more priority than faster processors. This is hard because it falls partly on the shoulders of the carriers because if they aren't putting out solid 3g/4g signals its making ANY device on ANY platform suffer in the battery area due to overworking the radios.

I like the approach I see MS taking with the new Win 8 phones and hope to see it develop further, because after all strong competitors make for an overall better product for everyone in the end as they try to out do one another.

Mine shipped with portico already installed, and my battery's been amazing since day 1. I used it for that whole first day, from when I bought it at 11am until I went to bed at midnight on the 61% charge it shipped with and still had juice left when I plugged it in that night.

Your experience may vary. But I'm not the only one whose battery life suffers after the update, even after two hard resets.

hey crazeee, I can back freestaterocker up on this. I've conducted measurements on a lot of devices and WP's performance on low-end hardware is spectacular compared to android... including JB. I see this as WP's best chance at gaining marketshare, but the 620 is still a tad too expensive. Shave off another $100, which will happen within 12 months, and WP's usability advantages over similarly priced Android handsets becomes glaringly obvious. This is not opinion, but fact.

The explanation:

Google must develop Android without making any assumptions about the underlying hardware. As a result, they can make absolutely no hardware based performance optimizations. They leave this up to OEM's, which invest as little in this area as possible. On low end devices such efforts are skipped entirely, as doing so is extremely costly.

Microsoft has no such restrictions. They know exactly what hardware the OS will run on (exclusively Qualcomm S4) and they use that knowledge to squeeze every last drop of performance out of the SoC that they possibly can. Those optimizations exist on all levels, and aren't just restricted to drivers as on Android. This explains why Microsoft could squeeze jellybean level UI performance out of a 2008 era SoC on WP7, which was laughably underpowered compared to the Android competition, yet performed better. WP OEM's need do nothing more than install it... no optimization work required, whatsoever.

I think you are letting your bias overlook a few things here. Yes WP is more optimized to the hardware but a lot of the actual performance advantages that WP7 had was simply because it was a lot more closed than Android and pushes a lot less graphically. Even if Android used only Qualcomm chips and even if Android OEMs were forced not to differentiate, you can still decrease the performance by say creating 5 home screens full of crazy widgets of different sizes and folders with 20 apps in each folder on top of a graphically intense live wallpaper.

If you stick to one home screen only and a few widgets, even the low end Android handsets perform well. I think that regardless of how well optimized WP7 was compared to the hardware, it would still chug if it had say 5 home screens instead of one, a live wallpaper instead of a static black background, and expandable widgets instead of one size live tiles.

If you insist, I can introduce you to our software profiling package for Android and WP, but I'm fairly certain measurement equipment isn't biased. ;-)

You quoted my very first post on this topic. I would recommend you also read those that followed. That might help clear some things up.

I think you are trying to say that WP may get things done faster, because the CPU doesn't need to spend as much time animating wallpapers or running widget code as does Android. Therefore, hardware optimization isn't the only reason WP is faster.

Ok, that may be true (although nobody forces Android users to do that. You can keep Android lean and mean too if so desired). However, I can't really speak to that aspect, because our profilers were usually setup to filter out any CPU activity not directly related to the task being measured.

Particularly things like touch tracking accuracy during page scrolling in the internet browser showed huge advantages in favor of WP (edit: although humans could only tell the difference using low-end devices), even when filtering out the few other things the CPU did on the side. That advantage delta all came down to optimization.

Despite being a cluttered mess, my gripe with android Is that it forces the user to do everything to make the phone run well, like not using live wallpapers and constantly closing down apps. That's what I like about both iOS and WP7/8 better than android is that task management is done for you. Sure in iOS you can close down apps, but its not really necessary unlike android where if you don't close down your apps it runs very slow and drains your battery life. The main issue android has is consistency, iOS is closed software/hardwar so the OS is optimized to run on ONE and only ONE phone, or a couple if you count past versions. Microsoft is in the middle with closed OS and open hardware(with some good restriction on like which processors you can use) and that's why every windows phone I have used, even low end ones run great. With android, on low end products, like their really low end tablets for around 100$ don't even come with the google play store and run awfully, kind of laughable if you think about it. The one thing I will give to android is you can do more on it than any other OS but because of that, its performance usually sucks.

And there lies the reason behind apple's huge following. Its simple and it works great without the need to fiddle around. I personally like android better for this. Its great to have a phone that works but for some the point of having a smartphone is having a pocket computer to fiddle around with.

No one's crystal ball is clear on this at all. Could ANYONE have predicted Apple would be the leader in mobile technologies in 2007, let alone 2012, when Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Blackberry were the cream of the crop? NO. Did anyone predict or foresee Android being a strong number two behind Apple following their initial success? NO. Did anyone foresee BlackBerry struggling to remain relevant, Sony all but disappear in the mobile phone market, and Nokia depart the mainland and hide across the pond for so many years? NO. The only thing that anyone can predict will happen is things will change. The #1 will not always be #1, the #2 does not automatically move up to #1, and an unlisted company could easily become #1 within a year or two. I have always believed, and it is still true to this day and the coming days, that Android's successes have been based solely on Apple's failures. With more players finally coming to the table, Microsoft and BlackBerry, Ubuntu and Tizen, no one knows who will be #1 in two or three years. It only takes ONE thing to tip the scales and crown a new king. It is fun to predict who that will be and there is certainly no objective way to predict it.

Now, to address the OP's question, I have been an avid Android user before Android was known (pre Donut days), and I remember when everyone said no one would get close to Apple. Well Android has done well for itself, but I do think that Android's fragmentation is a double-edged sword. Yes, it gets more people into the game on Android. No, it does not create loyalty for the OS. I am but one example of many people I know of that are/were simply waiting for something better to come along. I like to look at Android as the rebound people go after after breaking up with someone. They fill a need for a temporary period of time, until something better comes along.

Yes, undoubtedly, the mobile OS market is near impossible to predict where it will go. Symbian used to be the top dog and in the matter of 3 years was usurped by iOS and android, and it will definitely happen again. I wouldn't bet on something open source like sailfish or Ubuntu phone (although I Really like the ui for ubuntuphone) to catch on. Part of the problem where android has a huge disconnect is the hardware/software integration. WebOS kinda proved this...You can have an awesome OS like webOS and it sells poorly because of the hardware, like the pre. Sure, the palm pre ran fine but it felt kinda cheap and plasticky, and would eventually fall apart. By the time palm came out with a decent phone, like the pre 2, it was too late, that and its sprint exclusivity killed it. What is so funny to me about android is it has right now, the same problem that windows had 10 years ago...when you don't put strict enough restrictions on hardware you can bet that OEMs will be like, OK, we meet the minimum requirements...now cheapen it!!! Does it run on a below minimum spec processor, yes! does it run well...NO! so put it out and sell it for less.

But I agree on one point Acejax says, android doesn't have loyalty. iOS users are fiercely loyal because iOS works, and it works well. Take the example of the iphone 5. Sure, if you look at the overall specs its a medium-spec phone for a high end price, but the overall package works very well and that's why people buy apple. It may not have cutting edge specs but it works well and the overall package (save for apple maps) works very well. I would say the same about windows phone, but android I would not. I've used a galaxy s3 and for example, I could not get the nfc to transfer data between other android devices. My friends phone grinded to a halt despite having 2 Gb of ram because a million applications were open at a time. So the hardare is impressive with its raw specs, but the overall package is lacking. Unfortunately many in the tech field don't get this. They are like, OOOOH it has the quad core exynos with a 4.7" AMOLED 720 screen and 2GB ram, but it still can barely run android well especially with Samsung craptastick UI on top of android. The overall package is not beat by WP or iOS.

I think androids other issue is besides the hardware/software integration and by far their biggest problem is OEM skins, and once again...look at windows. When have OEMS ever loaded software that improved the user experience, not just loaded bloatware onto a phone. As of late, Nokia is one of the only ones I can think of. HTC sense used to improve android by giving it features it didn't otherwise have, now its just a pain to get around in android. Samsung's touchwiz is just an annoying skin to differentiate itself from the market with not really adding new features. Personally, right now, If I were to buy an android phone I would only get a nexus device simply because its a stock android experience without all the crapware. I'll end it with a better question: When does a purely hardware company only do software well? I'm looking mostly at sony for the answer to this question?